London Busmen in Battle

[p010] London Busmen in Battle Bob Potter THE busman’s is a job with as many shifts as there are buses on the road. Ours is a job where you are called upon to work hardest when everybody else is resting. If the bus strike has achieved anything, it has brought the . working conditions and rates of pay to public notice. This article is designed to give the background to the strike, to draw the lessons, and to put proposals for the future. DETERIORATION OF THE JOB There is not a job in the country that has deteriorated so much in pay and conditions as has the bus industry. The last time we were on official strike was in 1937— twenty-one years ago. The strike lasted four weeks ‘for the right to live a little longer’, and was fought mainly on the issue of reducing the working day. Over the years we established 7 hours 20 minutes as the maximum spell of duty. In 1956 a new agreement came into effect, which gave busmen a maximum day of 8 hours 15 minutes—the longest for twenty-five years. The quality of uniforms issued has gone from bad to worse, as the London Transport Executive ‘economizes” on material. Many of the staff find rashes developing on their legs, and women are obliged to wear stockings under their trousers for protection. It is a brave man who gets his uniform cleaned—it generally falls to pieces as a result, and he is obliged to wear his own trousers until the next uniform issue. Compare general working conditions with those of thirty years ago. The average takings of a conductor were about £3 a day, the bus carried thirty-four pas- sengers, average speed was 10 miles per hour, the weekly wage £3 10s. Today the average takings are between £13 and £20, the bus has fifty-six seats, and will soon have sixty-five, travelling speed is 30 m.p.h. by law, but is often 40 m.p.h., and the weekly wage, including the 8s. 6d. award, is £9 18s. The busman works eleven days a fortnight, and is paid time and a half on Sunday, and approximately time and a quarter for Saturday after- nocn and evening. From the second best trade union rate before the second world war, the London busman’s rate has gone down to about fifty-sixth on the list. SPEED UP The last few years have seen a great speed up and intensification of work. For example, look at my own route 31. We travel from Chelsea to Camden Town, a distance of eight miles. There are forty-three stops on the route, twenty-six of which are compulsory, and the maximum running time in the peak period is forty-four minutes. That is just one minute from one stop to the next, load and unload. On the same route there are twenty sets of traffic lights—catch half of them, and there are ten minutes to be made up somehow. To help the conductor work harder, the Gibson ticket machine has recently been introduced: it weighs 34lb. Many medical experts fear it will have an adverse effect on the health of the wearers—particularly the women. This apart from the fact that it is often impossible for a conductor to get inside the bus, between stops, wearing this ‘infernal machine’ if he has standing passengers. ACCIDENTS Naturally this speed up means danger on the roads. Accidents are more frequent than the public realize. I have the figures for Battersea garage for April and May of last year. With eighty buses, there were no fewer than 66 acci- dents—which means that, on an average, every bus is expected to be involved in an accident every three months. The time spent on repair of these buses was 382 hours. Battersea has two types of bus, one six inches wider than the other. It is significant that exactly twice as many accidents occur with the wider bus. The new Routemaster will be of the wider type, so we must ex- pect the figure to increase. Battersea garage is a small shed—what must the figures be like on a fleet level? Every new schedule means more buses are taken off the road. That means longer queues, with more abuse for the conductor when he does arrive, harder work, more speeding, more danger. - Even the Court of Inquiry under Sir John Forste stated that cutting buses does not help the LTE finan- cially, as more passengers walk because they are tired cf waiting, and takings therefore drop. Last April saw a 4 per cent. cut in services. While the strike was in progress, an announcement about a further 10 per cent. cut was placed in the garages. On these grounds the LTE is failing to provide an adequate service as required by the Transport Act. Were London Transport a private concern, Elliot and his stooges would be sacked for inefficiency. LOSS OF STAFF This speed up and deterioration have led to a fantastic staff turnover. Taking the six months ending June 1957, and comparing them with the same period five years previously, the total road staffs employed have declined as follows: Decrease Percentage Drivers and conductors ...... 6,416 13.6 Shop grades. ..................44. 1,524 23.3 Inside staffs ..................... 2,271 21.3 Total staffs .........0.00 ce cece 10,211. 16.2 Vehicles 2.1.0.0... 2c. cc cece cece e eee 850 8.3 It is interesting to note that at the same time as the ‘earning’ staff has decreased, the number of supervisors has increased. In the period under review the number of supervisors has increased by 298 (9.6 per cent.), mean- ing that there is slightly more than one supervisor to each three vehicles. MONEY _ Most people realized that the busmen were justified in asking for more money, but believed, due to govern- ment-sponsored propaganda, that London Transport and 71

[p011] * LABOUR REVIEW the British Transport Commission being ‘in the red’, it was not possible to grant the increases demanded. . Just glance at the money paid out by the Transport Commission in 1956: To former shareholders ............ £36,000,000 To interest on loans ............... £13,000,000 Fuel oil tax 00.0.0... cc cece eee eee £4,500,000 Total £53,500,000 Is it surprising that the Commission can announce only a ‘marginal profit’? ‘The ex-shareholder has never been better off. Original £1 investments were bought for six £1 guaranteed 3 per cent. British Transport stock certificates. The ex-share- holder has either sold out and reinvested, or enjoys his regular interest payments, with no risks attached— payments that are to continue well into the next century. Had the recent budget reduced fuel tax by half, to ls. 3d. per gallon, the money saved would have easily met the 10s. 6d. wage claim. INCREASED TAKINGS Apart from the millions of pounds paid away, the increased takings of the LTE would more than meet the £2 million wage claim. The fares revenue figures of the LTE for the first forty-four weeks of 1957, compared with the same period of 1956, show a net revenue gain of £4,315,000. Calculate these figures over fifty-two weeks, and the gain would be at least £5 million. In- creased takings could have met the 25s. originally de- manded, without fare increases or ‘economies’. PAY RISES FOR SOME The money is soon found when it is for the Executive. Sir John Elliot, chairman of London Transport, had a pay increase of £500, back-dated to July 1, 1957. His deputy-chairman did even better—his pay went up by £2,000. Even the three part-timers—Lord Williams, C. J. Geddes and S. H. Leake—received an extra £500 apiece. They vote a 50 per cent. increase for themselves, but resent the idea of giving the busmen an extra 5 per cent. WHY THE JOB HAS DETERIORATED Much of the responsibility for the worsening condi- tions must be placed on bad trade union leadership. Under Deakin the busmen led the wage-freeze move- ment. Other sections of the working class increased their wages, while the busmen stayed put. Deakin was more interested in hunting communists than in fighting for his membership. The election of Frank Cousins as general secretary was therefore hailed by many as a real step forward. His Left-sounding speeches impressed the more militant of the membership. No one will deny that Cousins is an improvement on his predecessors, for he does keep some sort of liaison with the rank and file, and all major decisions are referred back. But the bus strike has shown ‘that he is incapable of leading the Transport and General Workers’ Union in resistance to the present Tory attack against the nationalized industries. THE TORY OFFENSIVE The refusal of the LTE to budge an inch must be seen as part of a general attack, directed by the Tory Government, against the working class. The Tories are 72 May-June-July 1958 determined to drive down living standards, and to do this they need to smash the organized Labour move- ment. The struggles of the London busmen, dockers and market men are all part of one fight. It is highly un- fortunate that these various sections were not brought closer together. Not only would it have made the issue clearer, but the dockers’ rank-and-file militancy couid have been infused into the ranks of the busmen. MONEY NOT THE REAL ISSUE Early in negotiations Frank Cousins asked the LTE if they would be prepared to discuss a 6s. 6d. increase all round. Sir John Elliot had already agreed to pay 8s. 6d. to central London busmen, and the proposal, had it been acceptable to both sides, would not have cost London Transport one penny more than they had agreed to pay. But Sir John said ‘No’. This showed that money was not the real issue. In an attempt to split one section from another, the Forster report had recom- mended 8s. 6d. for central London busmen, and nothing for inside staffs and country services; London Transport was carrying on the same policy. The day the strike began the political correspondent of The Times wrote: ‘It is important to the Government that the bus strike should remain isolated from the dis- pute over railway pay.’! The Government realized that a united front of workers could have forced a change in Westminster. So Sidney Greene was playing the Tories’ game when he sold out the members of the National Union of Railwaymen for 3 per cent. It was a stab in the back for the busmen. But for the bus dispute the railwaymen would have got nothing. . TRADE UNION AND LABOUR PARTY LEADERS UNPREPARED There was no lack of capacity or willingness on the part of the busmen and other sections of the TGWU to carry the fight to a finish. The trade union leadership, including Cousins, was not prepared to meet an all-out offensive by the employers with an all-out counter-offensive by Labour. To have extended the dispute would have meant not only a victory for the busmen as a section, but quite possibly the overthrow of the Tory Government and its replacement by a Labour government. This Labour Government would have been returned through the power of the working class, rejecting any wage freeze or reformist policies designed to bolster up capitalism. The Trades Union Congress and Cousins faced great dangers in the course of the bus dispute: a mass movement of this character would have swept away all hopes of a mixed economy and placed important social advances on the order of the day. The TUC and the Labour leaders are committed to the maintenance of capitalism. They fear any move- ment that can show the working class its power and ability to overthrow a government by class action. So the stage was set for the containment and destruction of the London bus dispute. THE LESSONS Above all we must recognize that the struggle of the working class is a struggle against capitalism as a whole. The principle of solidarity action, with all sections help- ing each other, is the only one that can win our immed- 1 The Times, May 5, 1958.